Upgrading Automation Suite

Important:

• Automation Suite 2023.4.5 and 2023.10.2 include an upgrade to Kubernetes 1.26.11. As such, when upgrading Automation Suite, you must ensure you do not downgrade Kubernetes. To do that, when moving from Automation Suite 2023.4.5 or a later minor version to the next major version, you must upgrade to 2023.10.2 at a minimum.

• For the available upgrade paths, see Automation Suite upgrade paths.

• If you plan to upgrade from Automation Suite 2022.10 or earlier, and Process Mining is enabled, you must migrate process apps to the new process graph layout before starting the upgrade.

• If you upgrade from an Automation Suite version installed a machine with FIPS 140-2 disabled, you can enable FIPS 140-2 by following the instructions on Security and compliance.

Requirements

• Make sure you meet the hardware and software requirements for the new Automation Suite version. If AI Center is enabled, make sure you meet the CUDA requirements.

• Make sure you follow the Automation Suite upgrade best practices and perform the upgrade process that best suits your needs.

Upgrade process

Automation Suite supports two upgrade processes:

• In-place upgrade

• Side-by-side upgrade

In-place upgrade process

The Automation Suite in-place upgrade process allows you to move to a new Automation Suite version while keeping your settings and data intact on the same hardware.

• In the in-place upgrade process, you first upgrade Kubernetes and other infrastructure components, and then upgrade the shared components and UiPath® product services.

• In case of hard failure beyond recovery during the upgrade process, you need to roll back to the previous version using the backup and restore capability.

Side-by-side upgrade

The Automation Suite side-by-side upgrade leverages an enterprise upgrade experience that is usually called blue-green and is a standard process across the industry.

• The side-by-side upgrade allows you to perform an upgrade safely using a parallel environment instead of upgrading in place.

• This method allows administrators to switch traffic from the old Automation Suite cluster (i.e., the blue deployment) to the new Automation Suite cluster (i.e., the green deployment) after verifying the new deployment. If you detect a problem, you can quickly roll back to the old deployment.

Upgrade mechanism and capabilities

Capability	Upgrade mechanism
	In-place upgrade	Side-by-side upgrade
Upgrade to a new LTS version
Upgrade from any supported version	1	2
High-fidelity data migration		3
No downtime during upgrade
Instant rollback

¹ You can upgrade from any Automation Suite version, but an intermediate upgrade between your initial and targeted versions might be needed. For details, see In-place upgrade paths.

² You can upgrade from any Automation Suite version, except for 2021.10. For details, see Side-by-side upgrade paths.

³ For details, see Data migration and responsibilities.

In-place upgrade paths

The following matrix shows the available in-place upgrade paths for Automation Suite versions:

- a direct in-place upgrade path between major versions is available;

- an intermediate in-place upgrade between your initial and targeted major versions is needed.

Note:

We strongly advise upgrading to the most recent minor version of Automation Suite. This allows you to take advantage of the latest enhancements and guarantees the seamless operation of all internal components.

Initial version	Targeted version
	2022.4.x	2022.10.x	2023.4.x	2023.10.x	2024.10.x
2021.10.x	2021.10.x -> 2022.4.7-2022.4.10 -> 2022.4.11 or later	2021.10.x -> 2022.10.9 -> 2022.10.10 -> 2022.10.12 -> 2022.10.13 or later	2021.10.x -> 2022.10.9 -> 2023.4.5 -> 2023.4.7 → 2023.4.8 or later	2021.10.x -> 2022.10.9 -> 2023.10.2 -> 2023.10.4 -> 2023.10.5 or later	2021.10.x -> 2022.10.9 -> 2023.10.2 -> 2024.10.0 or later
2022.4.x	2022.4.0-2022.4.6 -> 2022.4.7 -> 2022.4.8 or later	2022.4.0-2022.4.6 -> 2022.10.9 -> 2022.10.10 -> 2022.10.12 -> 2022.10.13 or later 2022.4.7 - 2022.4.11 -> 2022.10.10 -> 2022.10.12 → 2022.10.13 or later 2022.4.12 - 2022.4.13 -> 22.10.13 ->22.10.14 2022.4.14-> 2022.4.15 -> 2022.10.13 -> 2022.10.14	2022.4.0-2022.4.6 -> 2022.10.9 -> 2023.4.5 -> 2023.4.7 -> 2023.4.8 or later 2022.4.7-2022.4.11 -> 2022.10.10 -> 2023.4.7 ->2023.4.8 or later 2022.4.12 - 2022.4.13 -> 2022.10.13 -> 2023.4.8-2023.4.10 2022.4.15 -> 2022.10.13 -> 2023.4.10	Requires 2022.4.7 minimum with Ceph on raw devices, and completion of Cilium migration before initiating the upgrade. 2022.4.7-2022.4.11 -> 2023.10.3 -> 2023.10.4 -> 2023.10.5 or later 2022.4.12 -2022.4.13 -> 2023.10.4 - 2023.10.5 -> 2023.10.7 2022.4.14-2022.4.15 -> 2023.10.5 -> 2023.10.7	Requires 2022.4.7 minimum with Ceph on raw devices, and completion of Cilium migration before initiating the upgrade. 2022.4.7-2022.4.10 -> 2023.10.3 -> 2024.10.0 or later 2022.4.11 -2022.4.15 -> 2024.10.0 or later
2022.10.x	N/A	2022.10.0-2022.10.9 -> 2022.10.10 2022.10.10 - 2022.10.11 -> 2022.10.13 -> 2022.10.14 2022.10.12 - 2022.10.13 -> 2022.10.14	2022.10.0-2022.10.9 -> 2023.4.5 -> 2023.4.7 -> 2023.4.8 or later 2022.10.10-2022.10.11 -> 2023.4.7 -> 2023.4.8 or later 2022.10.12 - 2022.10.13 -> 2023.4.8 or later 2022.10.14 -> 2023.4.10	2022.10.0-2022.10.9 -> 2023.10.2 -> 2023.10.4 -> 2023.10.5 or later 2022.10.10-2022.10.11 -> 2023.10.4 - 2023.10.5 -> 2023.10.6 2022.10.12 - 2022.10.13 -> 2023.10.5 or later 2022.10.14 -> 2023.10.7	2022.10.0-2022.10.9 -> 2023.10.2 -> 2024.10.0 or later 2022.10.10-2022.10.14 -> 2024.10.0 or later
2023.4.x	N/A	N/A	2023.4.0-2023.4.4 -> 2023.4.5 2023.4.5-2023.4.6 -> 2023.4.7-2023.4.8 -> 2023.4.10	2023.4.0-2023.4.4 -> 2023.10.2 -> 2023.10.4 → 2023.10.5 or later 2023.4.5-2023.4.6 -> 2023.10.4 - 2023.10.5 -> 2023.10.6 2023.4.7 - 2023.4.8 -> 2023.10.5 or later 2023.4.10 -> 2023.10.7	2023.4.0-2023.4.4 -> 2023.10.2 -> 2024.10.0 or later 2023.4.5-2023.4.9 → 2024.10.0 or later
2023.10.x	N/A	N/A	N/A	2023.10.0 - 2023.10.3 -> 2023.10.4 - 2023.10.5 -> 2023.10.7	2023.10.0 - 2023.10.1 -> 2023.10.2 -> 2024.10.0 or later 2023.10.2 - 2023.10.6 -> 2024.10.0 or later
2024.10.x	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	2024.10.0 -> 2024.10.1

Note:

• In some cases, upgrading Automation Suite requires transitioning through an intermediate version or skiping some versions entirely to maintain the smooth functioning of the internal components. Not following the upgrade guidelines in the previous table may lead to an internal component downgrade or an unsuccessful internal component upgrade, thereby causing the Automation Suite upgrade to fail.

• If you plan to upgrade from Automation Suite 2022.10 or earlier, and Process Mining is enabled, you must migrate process apps to the new process graph layout before starting the upgrade.

• If you use Active Directory (AD) and are planning on upgrading to 2023.4.0, we highly recommend that you skip straight to the 2023.4.3 version, as 2023.4.0, 2023.4.1 and 2023.4.2 are impacted by an AD issue.

• Only upgrades to Automation Suite 2023.10 and later leverage the simplified upgrade process.

Side-by-side upgrade paths

The following matrix shows the available side-by-side upgrade paths for Automation Suite versions:

- a direct side-by-side upgrade path between versions is available;

- a side-by-side upgrade between your initial and targeted versions is not possible.

Note:

We strongly advise upgrading to the most recent minor version of Automation Suite. This allows you to take advantage of the latest enhancements and guarantees the seamless operation of all internal components.

Initial version	Targeted version
	2021.10.x	2022.4.x	2022.10.x	2023.4.x	2023.10.x
2021.10.x
2022.4.x	N/A
2022.10.x	N/A	N/A
2023.4.x	N/A	N/A	N/A
2023.10.x	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Upgrade best practices

If you can bring an additional environment to perform the upgrade, we recommend choosing the side-by-side upgrade path as it provides a safer upgrade approach and instant rollback.

If you cannot bring an additional environment to perform the upgrade, you can opt for the in-place upgrade. Make sure to follow the upgrade validation best practices.

Upgrade validation best practices

Environments

We recommend preparing two similar Automation Suite environments, regardless of whether you want to use the in-place or side-by-side upgrade:

• Automation Suite multi-node cluster for dev or QA

  Note: The dev/QA environment does not need to be online all the time if not used for anything else than upgrade validation.

• Automation Suite multi-node cluster for production

Backup

It is strongly recommended to create a backup of the cluster and the SQL database before upgrading Automation Suite. This is to ensure you can restore the cluster if something goes wrong during the upgrade operation.

Cluster data is backed up on the NFS server. Make sure you have configured the NFS server before proceeding.

Authentication

Make sure to copy the value of global.userInputs.identity.krb5KeytabSecret to global.kerberosAuthConfig.userKeytab if you simultaneously meet the following requirements:

• You configured the Active Directory integration using username and password;

• You have Windows authentication enabled;

• You do not use SQL integrated authentication.

Automation validation best practices

To validate the automations that you built, create separate organizations or tenants directly in your Automation Suite production environment, as it is the most cost-effective solution. For more best practices, see Orchestrator - Automation Best Practices.

Version validation

To validate your automations in different environments and versions, leverage your second Automation Suite cluster after installing the new Automation Suite cluster but before switching the traffic to the new cluster in production.

Licensing

Upgrading to a new Automation Suite version does not require an additional license, regardless of which upgrade path you choose. However, if you follow our best practices, and use two Automation Suite clusters (one for QA/dev, and another for production), you need a license per cluster.